For many years high strength wire rope or cable has been cut by impact-type or hammer-action, wire rope cutters. Such cutters are well known in the industry and are particularly advantageous in that they are portable and yet capable of a superior cut on a high-strength cable with only a few blows of a hammer.
Commercially available impact-type wire rope cutters are all generally formed in the same manner. They include a body having a base portion formed for receipt and support of a length of wire rope thereon. Usually a saddle or groove is provided in the base portion and a cutting die is mounted across the saddle or groove. The body extends upwardly to a position over the saddle or groove, and a guide portion is provided in the upper portion of the body and a vertically reciprocatable chisel or cutter is mounted in the guide. The chisel includes an upper end formed with a surface to be struck by a hammer and a lower end which carries a tool steel blade that mates with the die carried in the saddle portion of the base. The wire rope is first wrapped with a cable band (a pliable metallic sleeve) and then positioned in the groove. The chisel is brought down until the blade engages the band, and then using a sledge hammer or the like, the chisel is driven downwardly through the wire rope by impacting the upper end of the chisel.
Such impact-type wire rope cutters have several advantages over hydraulic cutters (hand or power operated) also widely used in industry. Primary among the advantages is the simplicity of construction and attendant lower cost.
Although one should employ a cable band around the section of the wire rope being cut so that any wire fragment produced during cutting will be retained, impact-type wire rope cutters are sometimes used without cable bands. Since these hammer-action, wire rope cutters depend upon a chisel to shear the wire, it is possible for the chisel to rebound off the rope during the cutting process and start a second cut longitudinally displaced on the rope a slight distance from the first cut. The result can be the severing of small wire fragments from the rope. As will be understood, such severing takes place at the time of impact by the chisel cutting blade, and the fragments can fly away or off of the rope at a high enough velocity to be potentially dangerous.
The tendency is for wire fragments to be expelled from or fly off of the wire rope in a near vertical direction along one side of the cutting blade. While proper use of the impact-type wire rope cutter will not produce fragments, and while many fragments which do result will be small, low speed or strike a part of the cutter, occasionally a high speed fragment will be directed upwardly toward the user in a manner which can be dangerous.